Wednesday, 20 August 2008

The Flashman novels of George Macdonald Fraser

With the recent dry weather the fishing has been a bit quiet so I thought I’d put pen to paper and give you the good oil on a writer that a bloke wouldn’t mind spending a bit of time with, and while book reviews are all well and good, I can’t help feeling that a bloke needs to get hold of a decent author that he can follow up on and get to know, because once you’ve enjoyed one book, if they’re any good, you’ll be wanting more in the same vein.

I see George MacDonald Fraser has recently passed on at the age of 82. A traditionalist, he was an outspoken patron of the British Weights and Measures Association which opposes compulsory conversion to the metric system, now there’s a man after me own heart.

George worked as a newspaperman after serving in a Border regiment under General Slim in Burma in 1945 (see Quartered Safe Out Here, below), and came to fame with the Flashman novels about the adventures of the villain of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, name of Harry Flashman.

Now Flashman is a real lad with the ladies and gets into plenty of scrapes, he writes in the first person so you feel like you’re right there with him whether it’s bedding Lola Montez, riding with Custer at Little Big Horn or at the charge of the Light Brigade. You can’t beat the clarity of writing, the historical accuracy and the way in which human weakness is portrayed in such familiar terms. George’s view of history as the escapades of cads and villains, is in my book a lot more plausible than the official accounts.

Flashman’s adventures as a soldier of the Queen, old Queen Vicky that is, are absolutely gripping, and you might learn a bit of history along the way. I don’t mind telling you if my old history teacher had brought the past to life with half the flair and skill that Flashman does, I might have ended up making a living from it, that’s how good he is, and if a bloke can do that well he’s all right in my book.

The one to start with is Flashman, then read the next eleven in any order you like; they’re all so good you won’t mind coming back and reading some again to fill in the gaps. And once you’ve read all the Flashman books, get your hands on anything else GMF wrote, like the MacAuslan stories about life in a Scottish regiment after the War.

But before we go I'll just add a note about Quartered Safe Out Here: a recollection of the War in Burma (1992); this is GMF's highly personal account of the Burma war, an unusual and possibly unique view of war in close-up: fearsome, sometimes appalling, often funny, and always a disturbing reminder of how the world and its attitudes to soldiers and soldiering have changed in 50 years. And this is how it starts, with a few words from one of our great British poets and writers from an earlier age, talk about bring back some memories! It's enough to make the hairs on the back of a bloke's neck stand up!

You may talk o' gin and beerWhen you're quartered safe out here,An' you're sent to penny fights an' Aldershot it,But when it comes to slaughterYou will do your work on water,An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din

So take my advice on this because I wouldn’t steer you wrong and give George and Flashy a go, you won’t regret it, class this as sae 5w40, easy driving, starts well any time but can handle some hard going as well.

The Flashman series constitute Fraser's major works. There are 12 books in the series, namely:• Flashman (1969)• Royal Flash (1970)• Flash for Freedom! (1971)• Flashman at the Charge (1973)• Flashman in the Great Game (1975)• Flashman's Lady (1977)• Flashman and the Redskins (1982)• Flashman and the Dragon (1985)• Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990)• Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994)• Flashman and the Tiger (1999)• Flashman on the March (2005)

Faces In The Street by Henry Lawson

They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own
That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street
Drifting past, drifting past,
To the beat of weary feet
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Patterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of betterKnowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of ClancyGone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet himIn the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingyRay of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty cityThrough the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattleOf the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt meAs they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

Green Eye of the Little Yellow God

The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God

by J Milton Hayes

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,There's a little marble cross below the town;There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,The fact that she loved him was plain to all.She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begunTo celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew; They met next day as he dismissed a squad;And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would doBut the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance, And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,And a gash across his temple dripping red;He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through; She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left aloneWith the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,She thought of him and hurried to his room;As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy airOf a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through; The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,There's a little marble cross below the town;There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

A dramatic monologue written by J Milton Hayes, 1911

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Thomas Gray. 1716–1771

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,The plowman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,And all the air a solemn stillness holds,Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'rThe moping owl does to the moon complainOf such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r,Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The Lotos Eaters by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1832

CHORIC SONGIThere is sweet music here that softer fallsThan petals from blown roses on the grass,Or night-dews on still waters between wallsOf shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.Here are cool mosses deep,And thro' the moss the ivies creep,And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep."